Evangelical Subversives

I came across a blog posting from Doug Groothuis, who is a philosophy professor at Denver Seminary. He describes his experience at the "Christian Booksellers Convention" this year, where he managed to use his TV-B-Gone universal television remote to temporarily disable 13 of the vacuous marketing video players. I doubt they'll let him back in next year -- no matter how many books he's written.

Anyway, his post reminded me of two things.

First, in 1981 Doug and I were both in a class together at New College Berkeley -- "Contemporary Evangelical Issues" taught by Carl Henry. I got an A so I suspect that Doug got an A++++. It was fun to be in the same room as these two intellectual minds engaged each other. I'm sure that neither of them would remember me but I certainly remember both of them.

Then, secondly, when I was managing the inventory and doing the buying for Quo Vadis Books in Tempe, Arizona, I went to the Christian Booksellers Convention in Denver. Even back in the late 70's it was a giant paradoxical circus. Sitting under the same roof were the greatest books ever written, just down the aisle from the tackiest Jesus trinkets you could imagine (and this was before the Jesus junk market really swelled in the 90's!).

I remember one of the plenary sessions where Calvin Miller preached a sermon on the "salinization of Lot's wife" and how she lost her life because she failed to let go of the culture she was coming out of. At the end most everyone gave him a standing ovation -- oblivious to the fact that he had just called the assembly to put on sack cloth and to cover themselves with ashes. It was a disconcerting but eye-opening and defining moment in my life.